Monday, April 25, 2016

Gadfly still can't believe Prince is goddamn dead. So many fuckers in this world who are so much more deserving of being in dirt nap eternity . . . . . yeah, Gadfly knows .... not a nice thing to say, but fuck it .. it's true.

Anyhow, a few awesome rockers paid their tribute to the Purple One:

The Boss:

(Gawd --- if that didn't bring a single tear to your eye, you're fucking heartless.)

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd (fast fwd to the 4:25 mark):

Eric Clapton:

"I'm so sad about the death of Prince, he was a true genius, and a huge inspiration for me, in a very real way. In the the '80s, I was out on the road in a massive downward spiral with drink and drugs [when] I saw Purple Rain in a cinema in Canada. I had no idea who he was, it was like a bolt of lightning!...

"In the middle of my depression, and the dreadful state of the music culture at that time, it gave me hope. He was like a light in the darkness. I went back to my hotel, and surrounded by empty beer cans, wrote 'Holy Mother.'

Trump’s pronouncements on foreign policy, combined with his years of broadsides, have set off a very real fear within military circles about what might happen were he to become president. In the last two months, I spoke with dozens of people in the national security realm—current and retired officers, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and former White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA officials. The words they used to describe their mood: Terrified. Shocked. Appalled. Never before, they say, has a candidate gotten so close to the White House with such little respect for the military.

One former Marine infantry officer described Trump as a “fake-bake-ing chicken hawk.”

“He completely misunderstands the military profession that he would head if he were the president,” said Robert Killebrew, a retired colonel who served in the Army for more than 30 years. Others were less polite. In a pair of ads produced by the American Future Fund, a retired Special Forces commander named Michael Waltz calls Trump a draft-dodger who “hasn’t served this country a day in his life,” and a Vietnam veteran, Tom Hanton, says that Trump’s quip about POWs was “the most infuriating comment I think I’ve heard from a politician in my entire life.” One former Marine infantry officer described Trump to me as a “fake-bake-ing chicken hawk” whose “knowledge of the Middle East could be trumped (sorry) by your average Georgetown sophomore.”

Trump’s chosen foreign policy advisers—which include a 2009 college graduate who touted his experience in the Model U.N. on his online résumé and another who used Kanye West lyrics to make arguments on his foreign policy blog—have only stoked these anxieties. “Weirdo nobodies,” was how one military historian characterized them to me. “They’re probably the least qualified group of foreign policy and national security advisers I’ve ever seen or even heard of,” said Richard Kohn, an expert in civil-military relations and retired professor at the University of North Carolina. A source with firsthand knowledge told me that Trump’s campaign pursued retired General David Petraeus, Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, but all three men declined. In a TV appearance not long afterward, Trump said he wouldn’t hesitate to replace the members of his military team if they didn’t agree with him.

If you honestly, sincerely, seriously .... love this country .... read this article. Then ask yourself if you are truly ready to put yours, your family's and your fellow American's lives in to the hands of this rich daddy's boy goofball.

Some of you may have heard about the meeting that Drumpf's new campaign manager Paul Manafort had with the RNC this past week where he basically sang like a canary in telling them that Drumpf and his neo-Nazi dog and pony show basically is phonier than a $3 dollar bill:

Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee in a closed-door briefing here Thursday afternoon that his candidate has been playing a “part” on the campaign trail, but is starting to pivot toward presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.”

“He gets it,” Manafort told RNC members. “The part that he’s been playingis now evolving into the part that you’ve been expecting.

The Gadfly "gets it" too. Drumpf has been baiting the right wing base -- Tea Party nuts, KKK crowd, xenophobes, militia gun goon guys and the rest of that sorry ass bunch of economic dunces and hateful pricks by pretending to be one of them --- all in order to rile 'em up and get 'em to the polls come November.

In simplistic terms, what Manafort is saying to the RNC is -- don't worry, Drumpf really isn't like those right wing goons he's been so cynically courting, but he needs them to pull that voting booth lever. However, after he's elected, he'll fall in to line -- just like any other military-industrial complex, bought and paid for lackey politician.

The Gadfly honestly wonders if the right wingers have any clue whatsoever how Drumpf is playing them like a fiddle and is going set them adrift in an ocean of ratfucking betrayal once he ascends to his cherished Presidential throne?

Frankly, as far as The Gadfly is concerned, if Drumpf does win come November, the ratfucking that is headed the right's way will be the glorious fucking deliverance of the Karma that they have had coming to them for a very, very long time.

Ahhh yes -- no better way to demonstrate one's faith in a loving God then to pump a few bullets in to the chest of a fellow parishioner at Sunday mass . . . .

A church member is dead and another member is cooperating with authorities after an altercation between the two turned into a deadly shooting at the Keystone Fellowship Church in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, this morning, officials said.

The victim, 27-year-old Robert Braxton, was shot in the chest during "a disturbance that escalated into an altercation between two church members," at today's 11 a.m. service, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said. Braxton died at a local hospital, Steele said.

Steele said the suspected shooter has not been charged at this point and is cooperating as the investigators work "to determine whether this shooting was fired under the law."

He added, "We are still interviewing witnesses and the autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow at the Montgomery County Corner's Office."

The shooter had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, which was believed to be a semi-automatic handgun, Steele said.

The relationship between the church members was not clear, Steele said.Hundreds of people were at the Keystone Fellowship Church service, Steele said.

The church said in a statement: "One man was shot and another is being questioned by police; no one was else was hurt."

The church added, "Our congregation is in prayer for everyone involved."

Would that they pray instead for and end to the madness of this country's mentally ill fetish with gun-goonery --- but The Gadfly knows that ain't gonna happen --- and so the senseless bloodletting goes merrily on . . . . Could be your church next . . . . The Gadfly truly hopes not...truly.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Well Fuck. It's only April and the world has lost some true musical giants this suck-ass year.

And now Prince is gone.

The Gadfly usually doesn't expound much on the passing of music stars, other than the courtesy R.I.P. comment and perhaps the sharing of a music video or two. But Prince is different.

The Gadfly is a Minnesota native, Prince's home state. The Gadfly was actually in the infamous nightclub First Avenue on a night back around 1983-84 timeframe when Prince was on stage - and The Gadfly had no clue who he was, and in fact, was too busy trying to pick up babes and win some billiard matches at the front bar area to care much about the stage show going on at the time.

But The Gadfly came to discover Prince and his music, oh yes he did. And it really was kind of accidental -- The Gadfly turned on the radio one day just as there was this searing guitar solo playing, and when The Gadfly says searing, he means searing as in molten hot shards of metal ripping through your skull cap at high velocity. And for someone whose musical world at that time revolved almost exclusively around hard rock like Led Zeppelin, Kiss, early Van Halen -- and the like -- that badass to the bone screaming guitar sound coming out of those Pioneer 3-way car speakers was heaven to The Gadfly's ears. The Gadfly listened to the remainder of the song and only at the end did he find out it was Prince on his signature tune, Purple Rain from the soundtrack album of the same name. That fucking monstrous guitar solo starts around the 5 minute mark of that song and it lasts about 2 and half minutes. It's fucking brilliant and breathtaking. It was so good that The Gadfly ran right out and bought a cassette copy of 'Purple Rain' and for about the next 2 weeks played that cassette from beginning to end over and over and over and over and over again until he was purple in the face. At one point, The Gadfly recalls sitting outside a nightclub after a night of prowling in his car with a good friend of his and he popped that cassette in and told his friend, who was also a hard rock guy, to listen to it. The friend was skeptical at having to listen to a black dude named Prince's music, but when The Gadfly played Purple Rain, the friend's eyes widened and something clicked in his little lizard brain --- and he got it.

Oh -- and just so you all know, The Gadfly's favorite song off that Purple Rain album wasn't Purple Rain actually, it was Darling Nikki. When The Gadfly first listened to that song he didn't care for it much, but then he listed to it again, and then a few more times, but also paid serious attention to the lyrics -- and The Gadfly was smitten. Who the fuck else could come up with the opening lyrics to a song like this? -- and get away with it??:

I knew a girl named NikkiI guess you could say she was a sex fiendI met her in a hotel lobbyMasturbating with a magazineShe said how'd you like to waste some timeAnd I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind

That song is musically and lyrically a scream. The Gadfly's first reaction was to be taken aback by the brash raunchiness of it, but as The Gadfly listened repeatedly to it, it dawned on him that Prince was just playfully fucking with our minds and his weapon was his naughty wit.

Nonetheless, that's just a truncated tale of how Prince and his art, because that is precisely what it is - art, had a major influence on The Gadfly's love of music.

And so as far as the obligatory R.I.P video ... here's one many of you probably haven't seen. Watch as the master shreds a version of the Rolling Stones' 'Honky Tonk Woman' ... wow...